Day in Pictures, May 15, 2014

By By Mike Moffitt

on May 15, 2014 6:31 PM

Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

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Finals are over, time to start bouncing:

Despite the tendency of bounce houses to turn into kites, students at Whitman College
in Walla Walla, Wash., decided to celebrate the end of the school year by bouncing in one. No injuries were reported.

Freya, the tabby belonging to Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, is not particular as to which foreign minister pets her at a "Friends of Syria Meeting" at the Foreign Office in London.

A man identified by Turkish media as Yusuf Yerkel, adviser to Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, kicks a protester who is being held by special forces police officers
during Erdogan's visit to Soma, Turkey. Erdogan was visiting the town after the worst mining accident in Turkey's history.

Toy ships float in animal blood and guts from an abattoir during a demonstration outside the French embassy in Kiev. Activists of Ukrainian Democratic Alliance organization used the bloody display to protest France's sale of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia.

Seen from Tel al-Sawadi, a large explosion rips through what it is believed to be the Wadi Deif
Syrian army base in northwestern Idlib. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamist
rebels detonated explosives planted in a tunnel under the base, killing or injuring dozens.
Opposition fighters have been trying to capture the base for over a year.

Tunnel bomb: Seen from Tel al-Sawadi, a large explosion rips... Photo-6306836.85836 - GreenwichTime

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Catastrophe Day:

In a field near Gaza City, a winged Palestinian girl marks Nakba, or Catastrophe Day, a reference to the birth of the state of Israel 66 years ago in British-mandate Palestine. The 1948 war over Israel's creation led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who either fled or were driven out of their homes.

Calum Stealag Macleod, 79, works in his Stornoway Blacksmith shed making a
tairsgeir, a traditional peat-cutting tool, in Stornoway, Scotland. The tradition of peat
cutting has seen a revival in the Outer Hebrides as residents are returning to peat, a cheaper
fuel, for stove fires and central heating.